


Burn For Me

by Daephraelle



Series: Altered States [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, F/M, Gen, Gen Fic, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:03:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 19,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daephraelle/pseuds/Daephraelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The courier and Pacer aren't over, not by a long shot. The fact that Benny keeps turning up like a bad penny isn't helping things either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would suggest to anyone about to read this that you click read 'Entire Work'. This started as an LJ comment fic, and so many of its chapters are annoyingly short.

The suite had always been designed for more than one lonesome woman and her thoughts and the courier felt the empty space keenly as she drifted from one room to another, the steady hum of the fridge in the kitchen the only sound beyond the scuff of her shoes on the sickly red carpet. 

It had never been crowded since it came into her keeping but at least there had been other voices once, filling the rooms. Now there was only the whirling scramble of noise in her head. 

Cass had left when she’d found the courier behind the Silver Rush, fucking one of the Van Graff thugs and Arcade had gone when she slept with his on-again-off-again Followers boyfriend. Boone she had asked to leave herself, before the coiled need in her body shattered what remained of his sanity and pushed him back into Carla’s cold, eternal embrace. 

The courier rubbed the heel of her palm against her temple. Her head felt normal again – well, as close to normal as she ever felt since the grave in Goodsprings. She wandered over to wall of her bedroom where a crude, hand drawn calendar hung. 

Three days. Three whole days she had been stuck up here, waiting for the flames to die down, waiting for her own body to be safe again. Victor had come up to check on her at some point and told her that Benny had made a run for it – crossing the Colorado River into Legion territory with the chip. 

All of this for one tiny chip. It hardly seemed worth it anymore. 

Of course, House wanted her to run after him and retrieve his property but the courier was happy never to see Benny again, if she could help it. 

The whole thing was a moot point anyway, she was no friend of the Legion and crossing the river would be suicidal, as it had probably been for Benny. No, she needed to concentrate on what was important – helping the Followers, helping the people of Freeside, the vault dwellers, the isolated farmers... The courier was sick of helping the big names; it was the little guys that needed the backup. The King had it right – they needed to forge a place where every man was free to follow his own path, do his own thing. 

The courier sighed as she grabbed her gun and headed for the elevator. The problem was, how could she trust herself around the people who were forging that world?  
She’d simply have to build alone. 

 

Freeside was looking as calm as she’d ever seen it and the courier could feel the line drawn between it and The Strip becoming less defined by the day. She nodded an acknowledgment to the Securitrons that guarded the New Vegas gate and slowly made her way towards the Atomic Wrangler. 

The Wrangler’s spruiker spared her a grin as she passed by. If the blonde ever stopped talking long enough to draw breath, the courier might have to ask her name. 

“I’m becoming a damn regular,” she muttered to no one in particular as she made her way along the side street. The Wrangler’s neon sign came into view, its light barely visible in the harsh glare of the midday sun. 

She was at the door, casting a negligent eye over her shoulder as she reached for the handle, when across the street, the door of the Silver Rush swept open and _he_ walked out. 

She hadn’t consciously avoided him, not really, but the jobs that she had chosen in the last few weeks were ones in the north or east of Freeside, or out of Vegas entirely. He was scowling as the door coasted shut behind him and was studiously ignoring Simon who stood guard behind him, his rifle resting against his leg. 

Frozen like a deer in headlights – wasn’t that how that old world saying went? All she had to do was turn the knob behind her and retreat into the smoky gloom of the casino but her hand wouldn’t cooperate. Any minute, she thought, _any minute now_...

He started to move forwards, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed belligerently on the horizon. The courier supposed he would have stayed that way, if only she had stayed where she was but her damned hand had regained movement and it was pulling open the door, letting the flood of noise from the casino spill out onto the street, drawing attention, drawing his gaze. 

She recognised the moment Pacer saw her, his feet stumbling ever so slightly on the uneven road. Her hand still held the door to the Wrangler open – the sounds of coarse laughter and rattling slot machines absurd, drifting as they were into the silent vacuum of their shared moment. 

Someone behind her, calling out her name in greeting and she started, breaking the deadlock. Pacer honest-to-god _blushed_ as he jerked his head away from her and strode forward, his mouth closed in a tight line and his eyes shining darkly with something close to despair. 

The courier watched his retreating form for a moment, before slipping silently into the Wrangler, her fingers ghosting across the aged wood of the door as it followed behind her like an old friend. 

The place was packed by usual standards – some new act was up on stage, crooning an old world song to a respectably-sized crowd. Old Ben was sat in the same chair as always, his hand raised in greeting. 

The courier smiled and sat down at his table. 

“How’re you doing, Ben?”

“Oh can’t complain, can’t complain,” he replied as he smiled softly, “A warm bed, regular food... Good company...”

He winked at her and she slapped his arm playfully. 

“Speaking of, are you free tomorrow?”

Ben looked at her sadly. 

“That time already?”

The courier turned away, fixing her eyes on the stage. 

“Already,” she confirmed in a distant voice. “I can feel it starting to coil in my belly and this – “she tapped the scar on her forehead, “—is starting to ache like an old ghoul’s knees,”

Ben reached across and patted her hand reassuringly. 

“I’ll be here for you when you need me, honey, don’t you worry.”

The courier smiled at the old escort but it never reached her eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

“Now _don’t_ start apologising again – makes me feel like I did something wrong,”

“I...”

“Uh uh. I know you always pay me – makes you feel less guilty about the whole thing – but if you’d let me, I’d help you out for nothing, you should know that by now,”

The courier nodded but after all these months, she still couldn’t find the courage to look him in the eye. 

“Now you listen up girlie, who was it that suggested this whole arrangement in the first place, hmmm? You didn’t twist _my_ arm, honey I had to twist yours,”

The courier sighed and sat back down on the bed, letting Ben rest a gentle hand on her bare thigh. 

“It has been better these last few months,” she conceded. “Before, when the Burn came over me I’d basically lock myself away in the 38 until it passed. But by bottling it up?.. I dunno. Everything just hurt more and the whole fucking thing seemed to last a lot longer than it does when I... I mean with this...”

Ben grinned and slapped her on the thigh in playful reprimand. 

“...Than when you stop being a puritanical martyr and let your body do what it needs to,”

She groaned dramatically and buried her face in her hands for a moment before jerking her head up and inhaling sharply. 

“But it shouldn’t _need to_ , that’s the point. This isn’t normal, Ben. My body, my _brain_ is so fucked up from Goodsprings that I have to pay a friend to let me _fuck_ him once a month,”

“What’s normal in the wasteland? Everyone’s screwed up in some way – your screw up is just a little more... unique,”

She looked at Ben, at his gentle smile, at the wisdom in his eyes and let herself believe, if only for a little while. 

 

The wind must have picked up since she’d headed into the Wrangler – there were dark banks of sand against the walls of the buildings and eddies of silver dust still twirled in the street, curling around her legs before falling apart. 

Hoisting her rifle more securely onto her back, the courier made her way through the night towards the glow of The Strip. As she reached the corner and turned into the main street two Van Graff thugs appeared out of the gloom, moving fast, with a limping Simon following closely behind. 

If it hadn’t been for her better-than-average reflexes, they would have slammed her into the ground in their haste. Simon glanced at her as she flattened herself against the wall but his grim expression only hardened when he saw her and his hand tightened on the plasma pistol that hung from his hip. 

On any other day she would have looked into it but it was dark, late and she was exhausted – both mentally and physically. Making a note to look into it in the more reasonable light of day, she continued on her way down the main road. 

The street was incredibly quiet, even for this time of night and the Courier felt a shiver of apprehension snake up her spine. Not wanting to look too obvious, she left her rifle slung over her shoulder and surreptitiously eased her pistol out of its holster instead. As the gold and purple glow of the King’s building came into view, she could tell straight away that something was wrong. The front door was wide open, spilling golden light into the street and there was no King on guard duty. Venturing closer she could hear a roil of incoherent noise from inside and a voice, louder, cutting through the cacophony and telling someone to hurry up and get to the Fort. 

There was only one reason that someone would head to the Fort at this time of night and the courier could feel that shiver of apprehension morph into real dread. Stepping over the threshold she could see ten or so Kings in the lobby, crowded around the frighteningly still form of man, his perfectly styled hair ruined by the blood soaking through the strands. 

The courier’s hand betrayed her again, flying to her mouth in dismay, the pistol lying forgotten on the dirty linoleum of the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

There were only seconds before the courier’s training took over and she shoved past the gawking mass of people and found Pacer, kneeling by the King’s side. 

_Just don’t look at him_ , she thought as she dropped down beside him. 

“Where’s he injured?” she asked, her hands and eyes roving over his face, his skull, searching for a wound. 

Pacer didn’t answer, his expression seemingly torn between wanting to rip someone to pieces and wanting to break down over his best friend’s body. 

“Pacer! _Where_?”

He jerked as though she had slapped him and his eyes followed her hands down to the King’s pale face. 

“I’m not sure, they shot him and he just dropped,”

“What did they use?”

Pacer stared at the blood that was beginning to pool between his fingers. 

“PACER!”

He glanced back up at her but it was slow, as though he were moving through Cazador honey. _Shock_ , she thought, _He’s going into shock and I’ve got about twenty seconds before he’s senseless_. 

“Did anyone else see what happened?”

“It was a energy weapon of some kind,” said one of the younger Kings crowded around the centre of the foyer, “a plasma pistol I think but we don’t deal with that kinda thing so I can’t be sure,”

The courier nodded curtly and reached into her hip bag for bandages. There they were, as crisp and white as the day Arcade had given them to her. 

Wrapping them securely around The King’s head the courier spared a glance at Pacer. _Eyes dilated, sweating, cheeks flushed_... 

“I can’t find the injury so I’m bandaging his whole head to keep him stable until one of the doctors can get here, okay?” she told Pacer, willing him to stay with her here, to stay grounded. 

He nodded vaguely and continued to stare at the blood congealing on his hands. 

There was a commotion at the door and Julie Farkas strode in, looking strange without her white lab coat and spiked hair. The courier stood up quickly to give her access to The King and ran a bloody, uncaring hand through her hair. 

“Injury to the head from an energy weapon, possibly a plasma pistol,” she relayed to the doctor. Julie nodded in acknowledgement but never took her eyes off her patient. 

Seeing everything was under control the courier scanned the room for Pacer and found him sitting against the wall, his knees up to his chest. She walked over; ignoring the sticky footprints she was leaving on the floor as she moved. 

Crouching down to meet him at eye level, she snapped her fingers a few times in front of Pacer’s face but got no response. 

“Come on, Pacer snap out of it. You’re second in command; you need to take charge _now_ ,”

It was true. The Kings’ paralysis was beginning to wear off and some of them were muttering about hunting down the attackers and dispensing some of The King’s justice. 

The courier grimaced; any justice they meted out tonight would be unrecognisable to The King, she was sure. 

“Pacer... _Pacer_ ,” She bit her lip and tried to remind herself that he would barely remember any of this tomorrow. Placing her bloody hands on either side of his face she gently stroked her thumbs over his cheekbones and tilted his face to meet hers. 

“Listen to me. The King is going to be fine. He’s in the best possible hands and he’s relying on you to keep his people safe until he’s better. Now you need to get up, turn around and tell your boys to _stand down_. Tell them to go to bed and that you’ll call a meeting tomorrow morning. If you don’t – “ His eyes slid away from hers and she shook his head gently, “ – _If you don’t_ , they will go out there, they will hunt down his attackers and they will kick-start a war that will tear Freeside down to the ground,”

Pacer nodded dumbly and the courier slid her hands under his arms and helped pull him to his feet as he leant his weight into her. 

“Okay listen up,” the courier called out with authority before she stepped behind Pacer and willed him to have the power to say what needed to be said. 

His voice was barely there to begin with but as the Kings stood in silent obeisance before him his speech gained strength. 

“...What matters now is The King’s health, so we’re gonna keep it cool until we know what we’re dealing with, you dig? Freeside is The King’s patch, The King’s people and we’re gonna look after all of it until he’s back to his best,”

The gang was nodding, some in total agreement, others less so but all of them began to file back into the corridors that led to the living quarters. The second they had gone, Pacer dropped his shoulders and staggered over to the chair that sat behind the foyer’s desk. 

Julie Farkas caught the courier’s attention as the doctor stood up and let her two assistants place the unconscious King onto a stretcher and carry him carefully out of the building and into the street, followed by two King guards. 

“I’ve got him stable enough to take him back to the Fort,” Julie said as she swiped the back of her wrist across her forehead, “I don’t think the injury itself is too critical but its position caused a lot of haemorrhaging and blood loss is the real danger now,”

The doctor’s gaze sharpened on the courier’s face. 

“If you hadn’t bandaged his head when you did I may not have been able to stabilise him,”

The courier smiled wryly and raised an eyebrow. 

“You can thank Arcade and his medical training for that. Best thing I ever learnt next to how to shoot a rifle,”

Julie snorted in laughter before it turned into a yawn and she headed towards the door. 

“I’ll let you know when he’s conscious. I’m sure he’ll want to thank you for saving his life,”

“Yeah,” the courier replied as the doctor left her and Pacer alone in the foyer, “What I wanna know is why I needed to save him in the first place...”


	4. Chapter 4

The silence was deafening now that the lobby was empty of everyone but her and Pacer. The shock had begun to wear off and now he just looked tired. 

“Go to bed, Pacer. We’ll talk in the morning,”

Hunched over, Pacer tiredly rubbed his eyes. 

“No, we won’t,” he sighed. 

The courier took a step towards him, mouth open but Pacer cut her off. 

“Look, I understand that you wanna help and I know that if you hadn’t a turned up when you did the King would probably be dead but this ain’t you fight and it ain’t your business. This is King’s business and we’ll handle it just like we always do,”

The courier clenched her fists in anger – if this had been two months ago she would have decked him and told him exactly how things were going to happen but now the memory of his body against hers – skin to skin – was burned into the back of her brain and so she held her temper. 

“As far as I can see, that way the Kings handle things when you’re in charge consists of violence, extortion and _incredibly_ reckless decisions,”

Pacer launched himself out of the chair and stormed towards the door to the living quarters, angrily avoiding her gaze. The courier vaulted over the desk and slammed her hand against the door just as Pacer reached for the handle. 

“—And don’t think I’ve forgotten those Van Graff boys I saw making their escape on my way here. If you don’t think I can put two and two together and get _you_ , then you’re dumber than I thought,”

Pacer flushed a pretty red and tried the door again. 

“Screw what I said earlier,” the courier muttered, “I’m not waiting ‘till tomorrow, we’re talking _now_ ,”

With that, she yanked open the door, nearly sending Pacer flying. The courier grabbed the front of his jacket and hauled him into the corridor and towards the King’s bedroom. 

She fully expected him to make things difficult but the fight seemed to have left him as quickly as it came and the courier felt as though she was dragging an exhausted Nightstalker puppy along behind her. The metaphor was quite appropriate too, she thought since Pacer had always had a sting in his tail. Even tired and defeated as he was right now, he was never truly safe. 

The door to the King’s bedroom was already ajar, so the courier shouldered her way in, dragged Pacer over to the massive bed and shoved him down by his shoulders. Stalking away from him she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to think of a way of getting to the truth without it turning into a bloody, knockdown fight. 

“Alright, let’s start at the beginning. You know who attacked the King and I think you also know why. Now I saw Simon and a couple of goons racing along the main street as fast as their little armoured legs could carry them not two minutes before I came across that mess downstairs. Match that with the fact that I saw you going into the Silver Rush the other day and I’m already starting to draw my own conclusions. Care to fill in the gaps?”

Pacer sighed and stood up slowly, brushing past the courier as he moved over to the window and its soft flush of neon light. He stood staring out into the dark, one hand gently massaging the skin over his heart. 

“If you were anyone else right now I’d have the boys throw you out on the sidewalk. Hell, a while ago I would have thrown you out _because_ it’s you,” 

He dropped his head against the dirty pre-war glass and closed his eyes. 

“Things have been better in Freeside the last couple ‘a months – and don’t think I don’t see your hand in that by the way,” he added, jabbing a finger in her general direction, “– and while things have been more stable, _anyone_ could tell you that things are changing in Vegas and when Vegas changes so does Freeside. We ain’t as independent as everyone wants to think. Whatever happens, whoever takes over it’s gonna affect Freeside so I decided to check the odds and I didn’t see us getting the better end of the deal,”

Pacer rolled away from the window until his back was to the wall. 

“So...” the courier prompted quietly. 

“So, we needed to get ready, get prepared. We needed something that was gonna tip the scales in our favour if we needed to defend our territory,”

The courier pinched the bridge of her nose feeling the beginnings of a headache forming behind her eyes. 

“So you went to the Van Graffs for energy weapons,”

“Yeah,” Pacer replied, “Seemed like the only choice. We have to be able hit them hard enough so they can’t hit back,”

“Hit who, Pacer? Who the hell do you think you’re going to need to use those weapons on? Some shadowy unknown future ruler? The Families? The NCR?”

The smallest of flickers flashed across his eyes. 

“Oh fuck, it _is_ isn’t it? The NC- _fucking-R_! You were going to start it all over again. After all the time we spent trying to diffuse the situation – with no help from you I might add... It would have been _war_ , Pacer,”

“I know!” he shouted, pushing away from the wall, hands raised in the air. 

“Then why?!” she shouted back. 

Pacer bit his lip and let his hands fall to his sides. 

“Because I’m not gonna let everything the King’s worked for fall apart after I- after Vegas falls. You don’t think that the NCR are gonna take advantage of a power struggle to muscle their way in? They’ve been after The Strip ever since they laid eyes on it and if they take over Freeside is screwed unless we take them out first,”

“You’re talking about NCR, Pacer! They’re not some gang who you can chase off. They’ll keep coming and coming until you’re all defeated or dead. Probably _both_ ,”

She walked up to Pacer and grabbed him by the shoulders. 

“You are trying to start a war you _cannot win_ ,”

Pacer just stared at her with sad, stubborn eyes. 

The courier could tell that she wasn’t going to get any further on that point, at least not tonight so she turned to the only other line of questioning she had. 

“At least tell me why the Van Graffs attacked the King tonight. Why did they go back on your deal?”

Pacer looked miserable. 

“There was no deal,”

“No deal?” The courier let her hands slide off his shoulders and down his arms until she and Pacer were simply standing face to face. 

“The Van Graffs wouldn’t deal with me. Gloria said she’d only deal with the King direct and...”

“And you couldn’t do that because the King doesn’t know anything about this, does he?”

Pacer shook his head silently. 

“That was the day you saw me,” he said, locking gazes with her. 

_Had his eyes always been that green_?

“Gloria had already turned me down and I’d had to think of a way to get her to deal with me. It took me a few weeks but eventually I found something I could work with,”

The courier raised an eyebrow in query and Pacer laughed bitterly. 

“Don’t get your hopes up, it wasn’t honourable. I blackmailed her. I came across some information that would ruin her chances of staying in business out here. So what do I do? I go back and tell her it’s either deal with me or deal with no one. She says she’ll have to think about it, give her a day or so. I leave and see you standing there by the Wrangler, all goodness and light... What do you know about having to make the hard decisions? Nothing! You’re one person,” Pacer accused, desperation in his voice, “I’m not! I have to make sure that my _family_ is safe, no matter what. I have to take the ugly options ‘cause no one else _will_!” The courier watched the last of his defences shatter and suddenly desperation turned to despair. 

“I didn’t know! I had to take a chance didn’t I? I thought they’d agree, that they’d play it safe!”

It all slid into place and despite her better judgement, the courier’s heart went out to Pacer – to that man so angry, so reckless... 

“They were coming for you, weren’t they? The King just got in the way of the shot. Oh, Pacer...”

He pointed a finger at her and stepped away. 

“Don’t. Don’t pity me. I don’t need your fucking sympathy,”

“It’s not pity, it’s _exasperation_. Maybe mixed with a little empathy but not pity. Trust me,” she half-lied, “if I ever make a list of people I don’t pity you’ll be top of the list. Most of the time you just drive me fucking crazy,”

Pacer stood still for a moment, trying to collect himself before he cocked his head and stared at her with those intense green eyes, as if he were trying to see all the way through to her bones. 

“If that’s true, and I do drive you crazy then why...”

The courier dropped her gaze to the floor, willing him to let the question he hadn’t asked remain the question she couldn’t answer. 

Pacer stared at across the space between them. 

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” he sighed. 

The courier nodded mutely, lips pressed tightly together and headed towards the exit, pausing when she reached the door. 

“They’ll come for you again, Pacer. You know that, right? You’re still not safe,”

He smiled – all desolation and fatalism. 

“Who is in the Wasteland?”

It was truth, spoken plainly but it didn’t ease the lump in her throat as she made her way down the stairs or the dread coiling in the pit of her stomach as she headed out into the dark.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time she got back to the ’38 the glimmer of discomfort behind her eyes had blossomed into a full-blown headache. Victor rode up in the elevator with her, his programmed drawl only serving to set her teeth on edge. 

“Rumour is that that snake-in-the-grass Benny is back in town. Mr House won’t like that, I tell ya. He better mosey along outta here before someone puts him in the dirt for good,”

_Benny, here_? If it were true, then there was only one conclusion to reach. The chip had succeeded in doing whatever it was supposed to and Benny was about to clear the board. The courier had talked to Yes Man when Benny first made a run for it and according to the incredibly helpful Securitron, Benny’s next move was going to be finding a way into the Lucky 38 and whacking House himself. 

Striding into the lobby of her suite, the courier swore that she could smell cigarette smoke. It grew stronger as she made her way towards the master bedroom until she recognised the scent for what it was. Easing her pistol out of its holster she slipped through the door and aimed steadily at the figure lounging casually on her bed. 

“How the hell did you manage to find a way in here?”

“Happy to see you too, baby,” he drawled, one of his distinctive cigarettes resting gently on his lower lip, 

“ _How_ ,”

“What can I say?” 

He smiled, teeth flashing white. 

“I’ve always had a way with women, dig?”

“Yeah, you’re just brilliant at shooting them in the head and dumping them in a shallow grave but I doubt that would have helped you gain access to the ’38,”

Benny’s eyes flashed like quicksilver in the dim light of the room. 

“Baby, don’t be that way, you know it was only business. Now that roll in the hay we had, _that_ was something else,”

The courier tried not to shudder at the memory and tightened her finger on the trigger. 

“ _That_ is not up for discussion, now explain why you’re here and not up in the Penthouse, unplugging House,”

“No concern for your electronic employer?”

"Whatever kind of creature House is, he has his own agenda, just like you. I'm no one's pawn,’dig’?"

Benny smirked and stood up. 

"Explains why you didn't stay in that grave after the Ben-Man took you out,"

The courier sighed and let the hand holding her pistol fall to her side. 

"Do you really have to refer to yourself in the third person?"

"What can I say," he replied, "I'm a sucker for the old-world slang,"

The courier leant back against the door frame and surveyed the former Chairman who stood before her, one hand slid casually into his trouser pocket, the other hooked around the slowly smouldering cigarette in his mouth. 

He looked a little worn compared to the last time she’d seen him. The chequered suit was more grey now than white, there was a large tear on the right sleeve and his hair – normally so perfectly coiffured you could see your reflection in it – was tousled and full of dust. 

"So. Where've you been, Benny?"

"Aw, baby if I told you that, I'd have to kill you,"

The courier's eyes narrowed in displeasure. 

"That's less funny than you might think, considering the fact that you actually _did_ try to kill me,"

Benny had the grace to look slightly sheepish as he met her unforgiving gaze. 

"I'm going to assume that wherever you went, you activated the chip,"

"Partly. I won't have to juice to run Vegas until I whack old Not-At-Home, take control of his systems and finish the upgrade, you dig?”

“Yeah, Benny I ‘dig’. It still doesn’t explain why you were lurking down here, waiting for me,”

Benny moved over to the pristine ashtray that lay by the bed and stubbed out his smoke in one practiced move. 

“Because you’re the only way I’m going to be able to get anywhere near House without that cowboy fink of a robot ending my existence. Trust me when I say gettin’ in to this place wasn’t the hard part,”

The courier, arms still crossed tightly over her chest, pushed herself away from the wall and stalked up to the overly confident con-man. 

“You want me to help you win the game that got me shot in the first place? The one that was rigged from the start? The one that _you_ ,” the courier jabbed him in the chest, “keep insisting will make this _freak show_ of a town a better place?”

She scoffed and turned away, heading for that ice cold Nuka that she knew was resting in the fridge in the kitchen. 

“You just don’t know when to quit do you, Benny? I swear–”

She reached the fridge, grabbed the Cola and took great satisfaction in the hiss that escaped the bottle as she flipped off the cap with her hunting knife. Taking a swig she could see that Benny had followed her out of the corner of her eye. The drink was gloriously fizzy and the courier let herself savour the moment before focusing her attention on Benny. 

“–Sometimes I wish you’d finished the job back in Goodsprings,”

“Now ain’t that a curious thing to say,”

The courier dropped the bottle onto the table a little more roughly than she’d intended to. 

“Not really. The way my life’s been since... Just a holding pattern of fire and need,”

_Why was she telling this to Benny of all people?_

Without meaning to, she let one of her hands trail over the scar at her temple. It was only when she saw the expression on Benny’s face that she realised what she was doing and dropped her hand. 

“Fire and need, huh? Doesn’t sound like something a cat like you’d let keep her down,”

“I don’t get a choice in it, Benny! _You_ did this to me. You. With those two bullets that the Doc fished outta my head. They switched something on in my brain, a need I can’t control. I get one, sometimes two weeks free of it and then I’m _lost_ for days. Wake up on the other side and all I’ve got is a sick feeling in my gut and a headache that could floor a Deathclaw,”

Benny stared at the courier as she dug her hands into the wood grain of the table, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. 

“This... wouldn’t have anything to do with that time we... knocked socks?”

A tightening of her grip on the table and her head thrown to the ceiling was all the answer he needed. He sighed rather theatrically. 

“I did wonder how you got so twisted that you’d wanna roll in the hay with the guy that tried to off ya,”

“It was bad timing on my part,” she replied softly, eyes still closed, “I wanted revenge the moment I knew where you were, regardless of what my body was telling me. If I’d just waited...”

“I’d be Gecko food by now. Not to say that it wasn’t a close call up in my suite. If looks could kill...”

“By that point, it wasn’t you I wanted to die. A few days later you were gone and I hoped like hell it was the last I’d see of you. Now you’re back again,” she said, turning to face him once more, “Looking to put me back in the firing line for an outcome that I don’t trust will actually come around,”

“That hurts, baby,” Benny pouted, pressing a hand to his heart. 

“Don’t do that,” the courier said sharply. 

One eyebrow raised quizzically, Benny slowly lowered his hand, letting it slide into his jacket pocket to bring out another cigarette. 

“Whatever you say, kitten,”

The courier grimaced at the pet name and reached into her own pocket. 

“Should I be diving for cover?”

The courier withdrew her hand. 

“Only if you’re afraid of fire,”

With that she opened her hand to reveal the shiny metal of Benny’s lighter before casually throwing it to him. Benny caught it deftly in his left hand and rolled it over and over again across his palm, as though he were searching for scratches. 

“How in the hell did you end up with this?”

“A Khan gave it to me in Boulder City. I shudder to remember what he wanted me to do with it,”

“Thought I’d lost her,” Benny murmured quietly to himself. 

“Yeah, well. I don’t smoke and there are plenty of easier ways to start a fire, so you might as well have it back,”

“Thanks, baby,” he replied, already flipping back the lid with practiced ease and lighting his cigarette. 

The courier pushed herself back until she was sitting on the table top, surveying Benny as he took a deep drag on his cigarette, his thumb still caressing his lighter as it lay loosely cradled in his other hand. 

“The problem I have with you, Benny – apart from the fact that you tried to kill me – is that you’re always out for yourself. There’s always that hidden trump card that no one knows you’re holding until you play it against us. You’re very good at betrayal,”

“Only when it’s necessary. I don’t like sneaking around – I ain’t a rat – but I also don’t like to lose so when it comes down to a choice... What can I say, I’m a survivor,”

“Aren’t we all,” she replied, “And I can’t deny that I don’t want a more independent Vegas. House is a disinterested dictator, all he cares about is getting the human race back on track, by whatever means necessary. To him the individual counts for jack shit and speaking as an individual, that disturbs me. The problem is you’re a hell of a lot like him. It’s probably why he made you his protégé in the first place. You put the ends before the means, a fact that I can testify to,”

Benny’s face lost its Vegas facade and for a moment the courier was back in his suite, staring at the tribal beneath the mask. 

“You’re not like me,” he said; voice like a desert storm, “You came from the Vaults, didn’t have to scrape a living out of the dust and blood of the Mojave. I never had what you had – an education, an understanding of what came before all of this, you dig? Becoming the Chairmen was the best thing that could have happen to our tribe and I made _damn_ sure that none of us, not one of us would ever go back to walking the Mojave. I wanted what you walked away from – steady food, comfort, culture – or whatever passes for culture these days. Now I got the chance to run the little world I live in, to never have to worry about whether someone higher up the food chain’s gonna have me for breakfast. I’ll be _on top_ of it,”

Benny’s cigarette lay forgotten in his hand, slowly burning away as he stared down the courier. 

“Once I have that, I can make Vegas a town where everyone can find their own place. But I’m a boy of the Wastes. Looking out for myself comes like breathing to me. Doesn’t meant I ain’t gonna help others once I’m secure,”

The courier was silent as she and Benny stared at each other across the tiled floor. 

“If you’d tried to sell that to me as the Ben-Man instead of that boy from the Wastes, I’d have shot dead you before you could say ‘baby’,”

Benny tried not to smile. 

“Is that a yes?”

The courier slid off the table and stepped towards him, hands in her pockets. 

“It is. On one condition,”

“Name it,”

“Freeside. It stays independent, under the charge of the Kings but you don’t cut it off completely like House did. Freeside needs a better future, just like Vegas,”

This time Benny did smile, flicking away his cigarette and extending a big, tanned hand to the courier, who shook it as calmly as she could. 

“Then we got ourselves a deal.”


	6. Chapter 6

The courier finished field stripping her rifle, turning to Benny as she slid home the extended mag. 

“You know if we’re really going to do this, we’ll need more than just the two of us running in, guns blazing,”

Benny smiled as he sat down next to her on the lounge. 

“Well, I _was_ assuming that your charming compatriots would lend us a hand in taking down the big man and his crew but I ain’t seen a one of them since I got here. What happened, pussycat? They all scram when they heard the Ben-Man was back in town?”

The courier rolled her eyes and headed over to the stash of ammo that she kept in one of the lounge room trunks. 

“Well _obviously_ , your presence is so intimidating, what choice did they have?”

“Sarcasm ain’t pretty on a broad,” Benny sniffed. 

The courier tipped the trunk over and let the masses of ammunition spill across the floor. 

“Lucky I ain’t a ‘broad’ then,”

“Uh uh, baby I have evidence to the contrary. Those charlies of yours are eighteen karat knockouts,”

Before he’d even finished the sentence the courier’s pistol was pointed at his head. 

“Keep talking like that and this’ll be the shortest alliance since Man befriended Yao Gui,”

Benny raised his hands in surrender. 

“Okay, okay I give up. So why are you all on your lonesome?”

The courier bit her lip and then cursed herself for letting her emotions show so clearly. 

“If you must know–“

“Oh, baby I must,”

“–Then shut up and let me talk, asshole!” 

The courier breathed deeply and tried not to go for her weapon again. 

“They left because being around me – it just wasn’t healthy anymore. For anyone involved. My... _condition_ screwed everything up, so eventually I just cut my losses and sent away anyone who was left,”

She sighed and raked a hand through her hair. 

“Not that I had many people left by then,”

Benny nodded and slapped his thigh as he pushed himself up off the couch. 

“Alright then, so we’re a duet. You seem to know your way around a weapon and you don’t die easy so whaddya say we get in the mix?”

“That’s just the point,” the courier replied quietly, “we need more than just the two of us. I don’t want to die here, helping you win absolute power over the place I call home,”

She groaned and slapped a grimy hand to her forehead. 

“Dear _god_ that sounds terrible when I say it out loud. Why the hell am I doing this again?”

“’Cause I’m the bet to back, baby. I’m a platinum prospect,”

“Ugh,”

“The problem I see vis-à-vis the backup is my crew can’t be trusted, not this late in the game. They’re outta the loop, in the dark. Light it up for them now and who knows what way they’ll swing,”

“I thought you commanded complete loyalty from your goons – oh I’m sorry, I meant _family_ ,”

“They’re loyal enough,” he replied, “but they’re also a conservative bunch of cats and me biting off the hand that feeds us ain’t gonna sit pretty with a lot of the boys, especially Swank,”

“So if we can’t go to your boys and we can’t use my friends...”

The courier grimaced as the idea flashed into her head and refused to leave. 

“There is another option. I can probably get a few men who are just as interested in an independent Vegas as you and I are,”

“And they’ll help us out? Sounds crazy, baby! Let’s look ‘em up,”

“Well that’s the problem. The guy we’ll have to deal with and I have a bit of a complicated history. It would be better if you wait here and I go talk to him,”

“Uh uh,” Benny replied, “Not that I don’t trust you, pussycat but I just don’t trust you,”

“Fine. Then come with me but keep your trap shut and let me do the talking, okay? His temper’s about as short as a corn plant in an irradiated field.”


	7. Chapter 7

“And here was me hoping you were dead,”

Pacer’s look could have frozen over Hoover Dam. 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Benny replied, “I had a couple of things to take care of but Vegas’ll always be home,”

“Shame,” said Pacer before he turned around and headed back into the Kings’ building, leaving the courier and Benny to follow. 

They moved through the foyer and into the dark and empty lounge, where Pacer silently gestured for them to sit. 

Pacer stared at the courier as she took her seat, eyes narrowing as Benny sat beside her and casually draped his arm across the back of her chair. 

The courier tried not to squirm as Pacer continued to stare at her. 

“So,” he began, “what are you doing with this fink, huh?”

Benny arched an eyebrow in silent rejoinder whilst the courier rubbed the bridge of her nose tiredly. 

“It’s a long story,”

“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon,” he said darkly, his intense gaze all for her. 

“Yeah, well perhaps another time, buddy we’re kinda on the clock,” interrupted Benny. 

Pacer slammed his hands down on the table, startling the courier and sending Benny’s hand away from the courier’s chair and towards Maria. 

“ _Don’t_ call me ‘buddy’. Your damned Vegas patter will get you jack shit around here,”

Benny eased his hand away from his pistol so smoothly that the courier could almost believe that he’d never gone for it in the first place. 

“Alright boys, let’s just lower the testosterone levels in here and put ‘em both back in your pants, okay?”

Pacer turned his angry stare on the courier but Benny simply gave her a slow smile and pulled out a cigarette from his trouser pocket. 

To be honest the courier couldn’t decide whose reaction was more annoying – the smarmy Vegas boy or the bitter, angry King. Well, she could decide later, for now she needed to get Pacer’s attention. 

“Listen, alright? We have a plan that involves giving Freeside its independence but we need your help to do it,”

“I’m listening,” Pacer replied suspiciously. 

“Okay,” the courier leant forward in her chair and rested her forearms on the table, “Benny here has a plan to take Vegas but before he can do that he needs some help taking out the old establishment with as little fuss as possible. That’s where you and a few of your boys come in. You help us take out House and when Vegas is secure, Freeside keeps its independence and gets its fair share of the action as well – no more being shut off from Vegas. You’ll the best of both worlds – freedom _and_ prosperity,”

Pacer looked from the courier to Benny and back again. 

“You want me,” he began, “to help give _him_ absolute power over all of us? Are you fucking nuts?!”

“I know how it sounds – “

“No, I don’t think you do! If you did you wouldn’t be sittin’ next to that jackal now. He’s bad news. For fucks sake he shot you in the _head_! What does a guy have to do before you stop letting him kick you around?”

The courier’s patience had worn out sometime in the middle of Pacer’s tantrum and she was utterly sick of playing the victim. She kicked her chair out of the way like a bad tempered mule as she leapt up out of her seat and stood over the shocked Pacer. 

“ _No one_ kicks me around you bastard!” she growled as she jabbed a finger in his face, “I play the hand life deals me and if that hand’s an ace high with garbage, then I grab that ace and I shove it down the throats of anyone who’s crossed me until they _choke_ on it! Then, I take their fucking royal flush and I beat the living shit out of anyone who’s left in my way, _understand_?”

It shut him up for a good five seconds before his cheeks flushed red and he jumped to his feet, leaning across the table so far that he was nearly nose to nose with the courier. 

“That little speech might work on someone who doesn’t know you but it won’t work on me, I know better,”

“Oh you do, do you? You think you fucking know me? We’ve shared a total of five conversations since I met you. I’ve spent more time talking to my fucking _rifle_ ,”

“I don’t need to talk to you to get your number, you ain’t that complicated,” he retorted, “I’ve seen you weak, seen you when you let yourself get vulnerable and there ain’t a John in this whole world that wouldn’t take advantage of that,”

“Like you did,” she shot back. 

It was a low blow but the courier was well practised in the art of surgically precise cruelty. Pacer stilled, his mouth open as though it were waiting for his brain to catch up. 

“He doesn’t think he’s the only one, does he?”

The courier turned to look at Benny, a dead calmness in her eyes. 

“Don’t,”

Pacer looked from one to the other, his mouth still ever so slightly ajar. 

“What, and let him think you’re some kinda damsel in distress that faints at the first sight of a cat in a leather jacket?”

“Drop it, Benny I swear –“

Benny let the smoke of his cigarette curl around the fingers of his left hand. He smiled as he did so but it had a dark edge to it and his eyes were less that friendly. 

“She has a ‘condition’, didn’t you know? I mean, I’m assuming from all that not-so-sub-text that you did the dirty with her but see, the _problem is_ that she didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Same way that she didn’t have a choice with that Van Graff guard, or with her friend’s boyfriend… Or with me,”

Benny stood with a languid ease that belied how quick he could be. The courier was almost shaking with rage but Benny either didn’t notice or didn’t care. 

“You failed to mention,” she said with deadly calm, “that it was you putting two bullets in my head that took my free will away. That all of this can be traced back to you and your big-boy hard on for the Strip,”

Benny’s eyes drifted to the gentle dent near her hairline. 

“And ain’t it a crying shame…”

He lifted a hand to her head and carefully traced the scar as though he were trying to read its meaning. 

The courier jerked back as though she’d been burnt. 

“If you ever touch me again, all bets are off. I’ll fucking kill you,”

Benny pulled his hand away and pasted a half smile onto his face whilst the courier turned away from the ex-Chairman and found Pacer staring at her with something close to horror on his face. 

“What does he mean?”

“That night when I passed out when we… I have this… cycle now, I suppose you’d call it. Every few weeks I get this… heat in my head, this need or whatever you want to call it and unless I lock myself away it builds until I can’t stop myself and I –“

Pacer waved and hand and turned away, heading for the drinks cabinet that stood behind the bar. 

“It’s no one’s fault – well, it’s his fault, actually but it’s no one else’s, Pacer. I’d never have told you, it was nothing you needed to know,”

Pacer took a swig of whiskey straight out of one of the bottles and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“And now I have a kind of system that works pretty well, only…”

The courier darted a glance at Benny, who had re-seated himself, his legs stretched out in front of him, resting on the edge of the table. 

“Only now it’s getting worse. Sometimes it’s only a week or even days between the losses of control and sometimes one screw isn’t enough to switch it off,”

Pacer froze, the bottle of whiskey poised on his lips and the smile vanished from Benny’s face. 

“The point is,” the courier tried to emphasise, “that the reason I’m doing all of this is because I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be in control of my own body, my own mind. I want this settled before I… go. Understand? _This_ is why I’m taking a risk trusting him,” she jabbed a thumb at Benny, “and why I’m coming to you asking for help, Pacer,”

She walked towards him, hands by her sides, palms up, willing him to understand. 

“You want what’s best for Freeside and god help us Benny is the best choice we have to rule Vegas. He’ll be firm but fair but most importantly, _he’ll remember the people of Vegas_. A hands on approach. It’s what we need after decades of House’s ivory tower rule. So please, _help me_ ,”

Pacer set the whiskey down on the bar and walked over to the courier, his green eyes strange without their usual spark of anger. 

“You want a legacy. To make sure that everything that you’ve worked for in your lifetime doesn’t fall into nothing once you’re buried in the Mojave dust,”

“Exactly,” the courier replied, surprised, “That’s exactly it,”

“I know,” Pacer replied sadly, the smallest of smiles racing across his face, “I want the same thing,”

Alarm bells rang in the courier’s head and half-remembered conversations and strange, unfinished sentences came together in her head. 

“Guess we all have our secrets,”

“Not any more. If we weren’t about to commit suicide, I’d never have told you. It was nothing you needed to know,”

The courier laughed and half-heartedly punched him on the arm. 

“Strung up by my own words, huh?”

“Touching scene, pussycat,” interrupted the oblivious Benny, “but does this mean that we’re set to go? Because if we’re racing against your biological clock as well as House’s big bad security, I’d rather be done before you feel the urge to jump my bones again,”

“You and me both,” replied the courier.


	8. Chapter 8

“I still don’t like this,” muttered Pacer as they walked along the outside of the Vegas fence. 

“You don’t have to like it,” the courier replied, “you just have to do it. As far as Benny goes - it’s in his best interests to keep us on side. If he doesn't he can kiss his Vegas dream goodbye,"

Pacer pursed his lips and ran a hand over the rusty corrugated iron of the wall. The courier watched him out of the corner of her eye as they made their way along the moonlit Vegas fence. There were so many questions hovering unanswered in the air between them, it was only a matter of time before one of them broke and started a landslide of words. 

But damned if it would be her. 

Another hundred metres and they would be at the closest point that the wall came to the Lucky 38 tower. Pacer reached the spot first and scuffed his boots through the dust and sand that was banked up against the metal sheeting. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, avoiding the courier's gaze while she did the opposite - hands on her hips and eyes fixed on the sky above her, searching for the white glow of the casino tower. 

"Fuck, I can barely see the Penthouse windows from here,"

"No problem," replied Pacer, head still down, "We only need to see those giant metal arms for this to work,"

"Yeah. I just wish it wasn't so damn high up,"

The courier stepped back and checked her Pipboy. 

"11:40, we've made good time,"

"Yeah, except now we have to wait twenty minutes before we can start. I _hate_ waiting,"

The courier turned away from Pacer and hoped her smile wasn't visible in the weak moonlight. Of all the people she'd met in the Wastes, Pacer was probably the most impatient. Always angry, always moving. 

"Just sit down and we'll run through the plan again while we wait,"

Pacer sighed and ran his hands through his hair. 

"What's there to go over? We wait for the signal, get a grapple hook over that outer arm and toss the end back over the wall to my boys once we've climbed up the damn thing. Why we can't just go in Benny's way?"

"Because Benny says he can't smuggle anyone else in his way and he won't tell me how he's doing it,"

"And let's pretend _that's_ not fucking suspicious," Pacer interrupted. 

The courier glared at her companion and continued. 

" _Anyway_... Benny'll meet up with us all in the Presidential Suite and then we head up to the Penthouse and take out House and his security,"

"Why the hell can't we do this from _inside_ Vegas anyway? Everyone else is going to head up from the other side of the wall,"

"Staggering people so that they slowly disappear behind a building is a little easier to hide than two people with a grappling hook trying to throw it into the air and catch it on a metal beam thirty metres up especially since I very much doubt that we're going to get it on the first try,"

Pacer grunted non-commitally. 

The courier leant back against the wall and closed her eyes, willing time to go faster. 

"How much longer do we gotta wait?"

"Another ten minutes. Just sit tight, Pacer - patience is a virtue,"

"Who the hell told you that?!"

"It's a saying from the old days, Pacer," she replied. 

He flushed an angry red and whirled away from her. 

"Don't start showing off with all that useless Vault knowledge, thinking you're so much better than us,"

 _Than me_ , was the unspoken accusation she could feel aimed at her. 

"I'm not doing it to make you feel bad, my knowledge is part of who I am, I can't turn it off!"

"Yeah, that seems to be a problem you have a lot these days,"

It didn't take a genius to figure out where Pacer was heading with his speech but the Courier had hoped that they would skip this conversation. 

"Are you angry that I didn't tell you or that I did?"

Pacer snarled silently, his fists clenched at his sides. 

"You took advantage of me, courier,"

"You think I wanted to do that?" she retorted, "I had no choice! Not to mention the fact that I tried to leave and you weren't exactly helpful. What's your excuse for what happened between us huh? Anyone shoot you in the head recently?"

There was a moment of stunned silence, as Pacer's cheeks flushed prettily before his gaze darkened and he turned his face away from the courier. 

"No. Not my head," he replied, his right hand massaging his chest as she had sometimes seen him do, when he thought himself unobserved. 

Her gaze softened and the anger she had felt towards Pacer and his thoughtless accusations evaporated. All she wanted to do was wrap her arm across the stubborn man's shoulders but she knew Pacer too well to try it. Stepping forwards, she stood as close to him as she could without touching. 

"How long have you known?" she asked softly. 

"All my life? It's always been weak but now it's failing,"

The courier forgot for a moment who she was with and dropped her head forwards onto his shoulder. To her surprise, Pacer didn't move. 

"Was is the... you know," she whispered against his back. 

"The jet? Yeah. Turns out you didn't need to spike it after all,"

The courier lifted her head and wished that Pacer would turn around and face her. 

"How long have you been taking the stuff?"

"A few years. Well, since I was a kid, on and off,"

"A _kid_?" 

She grabbed his shoulders and spun him around to face her. 

"Why the hell would you use it for so long if you knew it would kill you? My god, Pacer!"

He stood silently miserable before her, and the courier spun away from him, heading for the gear they had dumped by the wall. Pacer watched as she began to pull the climbing gear out of the bag and set up the rope and grappling hook, her movements sharp and careless. 

She grabbed the end of the rope and tried to attach it the the hook. When it slipped to the ground for the third time, the courier slid to the ground with it. 

"I don't want you to die,"

She said it so softly, so quietly - as if she were whispering it to the night wind that caressed her face. A shuffle and crunch of gravel to her right and then he was sitting down beside her, head down and arms wrapped around his knees. 

"I don't want you to die either. Seems that's all we're good at - pissing each other off,"

The courier laughed but stopped herself before it turned into a sob. 

Pacer, his lips pressed tightly together and his cheeks flushed, pressed a warm hand against her back. 

She turned to look at him, sniffing as surreptitiously as she could. 

"It meant something to me you know, that time we..."

Pacer nodded, staring out at the dark remains of Las Vegas. 

"Me too. I dunno _what_ it meant but it meant something,"

The courier smiled and rested her head on Pacer's shoulder. The smell of pomade and the warmth of his hand and she could almost believe she was somewhere else.


	9. Chapter 9

The last of the Kings scrambled up onto the ledge outside the cocktail lounge windows and edged his way around to the open window, inside which the courier stood waiting. 

"That's the last of them," she whispered to Pacer as she guided the man through the gap and onto the chintzy-patterned carpet of the lounge. 

Pacer nodded and turned to the small group of crouching Kings that were massed around him. 

"Okay boys, you know the drill. We meet up with the Chairman in the Presidential suite, then we all head on up to the top of this needle and pay House our final respects,"

The courier came up behind Pacer and silently touched his shoulder before heading towards the elevators. The ride to the suite was quiet and crowded and the courier was pleasantly surprised when the doors opened and revealed Benny leaning against the doorjamb of the bedroom, his hands caressing Maria. 

"I swear if that gun were a woman..." she muttered and Benny shot her a cat-like grin. 

"You're here, pussycat. Wasn't sure if you were gonna make it to this shindig,"

"I made it here just fine, Benny," she replied, her eyes scanning the walls, her hands never far away from her gun. "Now that we've got the pleasantries aside, can we get moving? I don't wanna press our luck,"

Benny raised his eyebrows and shrugged in agreement, before gesturing towards the elevators. 

"After you, sweet cheeks,"

The courier snarled silently and promised herself a whole bottle of pre-war whiskey if she could just get through this without punching Benny square in his smug, egotistical face. 

If the ride to the suite had been silent, the ride to the Penthouse was almost shaking with the sound of the unspoken. The courier just clenched her fists and rode it out but she could see that Pacer - darting poisonous glances at Benny - was close to saying something that they'd _all_ regret. 

The quiet 'ding' of the elevator as it came to a stop was quite possibly the most beautiful sound the courier had ever heard. 

Weapons out and eyes scanning the open balcony, the group fanned out from the elevator and waited for the courier to take point. She knew that it was most likely Jane that they would encounter first and she pushed the twinge of guilt she felt at destroying her to the back of her mind. 

Past the first set of stairs and through the partition into House's dark, silent command room and still there was no sign of any Securitrons. The courier spared a glance at Pacer, whose brow was furrowed with the same confusion as hers. 

Benny crept up beside her, Maria pressed smoothly against his thigh. 

"Problem, pussycat?"

The courier shook her head in frustration and turned to face him. 

"We should have met resistance by now," she whispered fiercely, moving over to the balcony's edge. "And look - there's nothing down there either and House... House's monitor seems..."

Pacer came up on her left, his dark gaze scanning the floor below them. 

"I know I haven't been in here before but ain't it a little quiet?"

"I don't know," she replied - unease in her voice. "Something isn't right here,"

There was a faint, ghostly glow emanating from the floor below them. The courier made her way down the stairs, her eyes straining to see through the gloom. Reaching the ground floor she took one step, then another as she tried to figure out what seemed wrong with House's monitor screen. 

Crunch. 

The sound of glass underfoot. It took two seconds, just two for the courier to understand everything. It took a second more before her gun was trained on Benny who still stood on the deck above her, his shit-eating grin visible even through to gloom. 

"Tell me why I shouldn't end your miserable life right now," she said - something close to true rage in her voice. 

"Because you wanna know how I did it, toots," he replied, "And you wanna know _why_."

 

Pacer stood with the rest of his crew, his brow furrowed with a mixture of anger and confusion. 

"I _told you_ he'd play us! Now... _How_ did he play us?"

"House is already dead," the courier replied, "I'm standing on the glass from his monitor right now and there are no defenses left either. That means _he_..." here she jabbed at Benny with the point of her gun, "... has already offed whatever passed for House's body,"

"Shoulda seen it, baby - he was more leather than man. Gotta say, I think I put him out of his misery,"

"So _why_ ," she whispered venomously, " _why_ did you concoct this... charade? Why go through all of this if you've already killed him, if you already have control?"

Benny leaned casually over the railing, a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. 

"Because I _do_ have control and now I'm gonna make sure it stays that way,"

"You fucking piece of shit, I'm gonna - "

Pacer went for his gun and the other Kings followed. 

"Uh uh! You don't wanna do that, boy. Put your peashooters down or join the man behind the curtain,"

"Do it," the courier said sharply, trying to ignore the strange reference Benny had made, the reference he shouldn't have been _able_ to make, "If he has us here, he has a plan and he's certainly not defenseless,"

Pacer looked like he was going to pop a blood vessel but he complied, lowering his weapon. The Kings followed suit. 

Benny took a long draw on his cigarette and sauntered down the stairs, past Pacer and the Kings, ignoring their presence as if they were so much old world trash. 

"Now. You know I've got all the bases covered, baby but I gotta admit - you threw me for a loop with all that 'I'm dying' crapola. Didn't know _what_ you were planning so I had to think sharp,"

"I wasn't planning anything, dipshit. I was trusting you to put aside your petty machinations and man up long enough for us to change Vegas for the better,"

"And it will change for the better but I'll be holding the reins,"

The courier dropped her gun to her side. 

"We could have done this together. All of us but you're still the selfish prick that I shoulda shot back at the Tops,"

"Sorry, pussycat but I don't share power,"

There was an edge in his voice that reminded the courier of the look he'd had in the Tops that night - the suave veneer of Vegas falling away to reveal the tribal beneath it. 

The courier sighed and rested her butt against the edge of House's dead computer. 

"So what's the play then, Benny? What are we here for?"

Benny smiled, the Tops panache back in place. 

"Simple. I lay out the new rules - how it's gonna be and _you_ ," said, jabbing a finger at Pacer and the courier in turn, "are gonna listen or make your peace with whatever passes for your gods,"

"I still don't see your leverage, ya weasel," growled Pacer, "As far as I see it, all you've done is get rid of the top man and left the top spot open for anyone will the balls to take it,"

Benny smiled like a cat and the courier tensed. 

"Pacer..." she warned. 

"No, no. He wants to see my leverage, I'll show him my leverage," Benny replied before slipping a hand into his trouser pocket. 

The courier sprang up from her perch and started towards him but he warned her off with a look. 

Pulling out a small, rectangular controller he turned to face Pacer once more. 

" _This_ is my leverage,"

With that he jabbed at a selection of buttons and stepped back towards the wall.


	10. Chapter 10

What came out looked like the average Securitrons that paraded up and down the Strip but there was something off about them, something that the Courier couldn’t quite put her finger on until they came close enough for her to see their illuminated monitors. 

They were soldiers. 

Gone were the stern, yet protective faces of police officers, replaced with the uncompromising, cigar-chomping images of soldiers. 

“What did you do, Benny?” she half-whispered, torn between fascination and fear. 

“What, you don’t think I crossed into Legion territory for shits and giggles did ya?” Benny replied, “I barely got outta there alive but boy was it worth the hassle,”

“Hassle?” Pacer intoned, “You call nearly getting skinned alive by Caesar and his freaks a _hassle_?!”

Benny glared at Pacer. 

“I’m laughing through the pain, boy. Why don’t we see if you can do the same?”

Pacer stiffened and went for his weapon but the courier strode over to him and wrapped her hand around his. 

“Don’t, Pacer,” she whispered fiercely, “I’m not sure if we’re going to get out of this alive but let’s not make our chances any shorter than they already are,”

Pacer barred his teeth at her but as she moved away, the courier noticed that he hadn’t moved her hand away from his own. 

“You know, you’re ruining my big reveal here, toots. Let’s pay a little more attention to the big man, huh?”

The courier resisted the impulse to roll her eyes and settled for crossing her arms over her chest. 

“So spill, Benny. How’d ya do it?”

Shit-eating grin back in place and a dark look in his eyes that was a little too heated for her liking and Benny was right back to it. 

“It was that platinum chip of ours, pussycat. Well, actually I suppose it was House’s but since he ain’t spilled his blood over it, I don’t see how he has jurisdiction,”

The courier stepped towards Benny, uncrossing her arms. 

“And you spilling _my_ blood across the sand? That gives _you_ ‘jurisdiction’?”

Benny’s eyes flashed darker and the courier could see his hand sliding towards Maria. Even with all of this firepower surrounding him, he still went for what he knew best. 

Good to know. 

“How many times, honey. I didn’t know ya then. You were just some unlucky kid who got in the way,”

The courier stepped up to Benny, teeth bared and leaned forward until they were almost nose to nose. 

“How many times, Benny,” she crooned with as much venom as she could muster, “ _there are no kids in the Mojave_ –“

She went for his gun but he was faster. Faster moves but slower on the pickup. As he slid Maria beyond the grasp of the courier’s left hand, she grabbed for the controller with her right. Maria was clear now and pointing at the courier’s chest but she was still moving. Too close to Benny and too close to gun she twisted around and slid the controller with all of her strength across the slick floor towards Pacer. 

The shot echoed around the Lucky 38, through the empty rooms, down the hollow elevator shafts and out into the silent casino floor. 

He looked puzzled, as though he wasn’t sure how the gun had gone off. The scene tableauxed for a moment – everyone frozen in place – until biology caught up with the courier and her legs collapsed beneath her, sprawling her across the floor. 

For once, Pacer didn’t try to draw his gun. One slow step, then two, then he was running before he dropped to his knees and slid to a stop by her frighteningly-still body. 

The Kings seemed unsure of what to do without their leader taking charge; they simply stood watching as Pacer shook the courier’s shoulder, desperate for a response, before rolling her onto her back. 

Benny still looked as though someone else had pulled the trigger but his tribal instincts were kicking in and the look was fading fast. Hands steadier than he would have expected, he leveled Maria at Pacer’s head. 

“Okay boy, just ease back there and get your boys to drop their weapons,”

Pacer ignored him and continued his search for a pulse. There was a sudden feeling of wetness around his knees and Pacer looked down to see a spreading pool of red creeping around his legs and across the floor. 

Benny saw it too and swallowed but kept his gun trained on the King. 

“You hear me Freeside? Get back over there,”

“Make me!” shouted Pacer, a truly feral look in his eyes. 

“Fine,” replied Benny as he reached for his controller. Confusion flashed across his face before Pacer lifted the controller in one hand, the other pressed firmly against the courier’s chest. 

“Looking for this, you son of a whore?”

For a second Benny looked scared before his mask of casual indifference slid back into place. 

“Well now you gotta make a choice kiddo – the power or the girl? Because it’s going to take you at least five minutes to work out how to use that thing and that’s five minutes she doesn’t have,”

Pacer looked down at the still form of the courier, then back at the Chairman. 

“Fine,” he spat, “Take it, I don’t care, I don’t care about _any_ of it, just get outta here and go take your precious city,”

With that, he threw the controller at Benny, who caught it deftly, pressed a few buttons and holstered Maria. 

“Good choice, Freeside. Now scram,”

Pacer’s look could have cut through granite but he bit his tongue and motioned for the Kings to head for the elevator. Sliding his hands beneath the courier, he went to pick her up when a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped him. 

“Leave her,”

“Not gonna happen,”

“Do it now, boy,”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“SHE'S DYING!”

“ _I KNOW_!”

There was a pause as both men surveyed each other across the body of the courier. 

“What happens if I take her?”

“I gun you down. I gun you all down,”

He was so cold, so incredibly calm as he said it that Pacer believed him. After all, his soft spot had been for the courier and he’d already shot her. Pacer and his boys were just – how had Benny phrased it?

People who’d gotten in the way. 

“I’ll be back for _you_ , make no mistake,” Pacer said, pointing a slow finger at Benny as he stood up. 

“I look forward to the day, Freeside. Now get outta my tower,”

Pacer obeyed, leaving the courier where she lay.


	11. Chapter 11

_Light…  
Dark…  
Light…  
Silence…_

And then blinding pain. She was screaming, screaming until she was coughing up blood, screaming as something cold and hard wormed its way into her chest and rooted around. A sharp pain in her arm and the fiery haze of agony washed away into a ruddy, grey oblivion. 

 

She was so thirsty, so very thirsty. If she could just open her eyes maybe she could figure out what was going on and why she felt like she’d been walking under the Mojave sun for days without rest. 

It took her an age before she managed to crack an eye open the tiniest fraction. Wherever she was it was dark and her sight wouldn’t focus. All she could make out before she sunk back into unconsciousness was a chair with a shadowy set of legs and a pair of shoes with a shine so strong that they were shimmering even in the low light of the room. 

The next time she woke, her head felt a little clearer but her chest felt as though it was on fire. The second she tried to move, the smouldering fire turned white-hot and someone started screaming. By the time the courier realized it was her doing the screaming, someone was holding her down, firmly but gently, while something was injected into her arm. As the fire died down and her head settled back on the pillow, she could swear she heard someone talking to her. 

“Slowly does it, pussycat. Don’t walk before you can crawl…”

 

Strange, twisted dreams and feverish imagining followed her attempts at lucidity – whenever she swam close enough to the surface she could feel cool water across her forehead and over her bare arms and it was enough to quieten the nightmarish visions and send her down into a more restful sleep. 

 

“She been sleeping for two weeks, ain’t it time she woke up and ate something?”

“Look, those bags of IV fluid we managed to scavenge have been giving her all the fluids and sustenance that she needs for now. At the moment, the most important thing is to let her rest for as long as she needs to. That wound is going to take a long time to heal and she’ll probably never get full mobility or lung capacity back,”

“Geeze Doc, rub it in why don’tcha,”

“It’s a simple statement of the facts. Whatever happened to her, you saved her life by calling me, not to mention using that jacket as a pressure bandage. She may want to kill you when she wakes up, I don’t know. She’s a tough woman but she’s not unkind. You’ll get a second chance if you deserve it,”

There was a sigh. 

“That’s just the problem Doc. This was my second chance,”

Silence and a sharp exhale of breath followed by the sound of footsteps moving swiftly away. 

The courier closed her eyes quickly as the other set of steps made its way into her room. A creak as they sat on the chair by the bed and sighed wearily. 

“How’re ya doing sleepin’ beauty? I swear that Doc’s aiming to form a lynch mob, especially now. You could direct ‘em, pussycat… If you ever wake up,”

Benny sighed again, vaguely disgruntled and headed for the door. 

“I’m gonna get myself a whiskey. Anything for you, sweets?”

The way he said it, as though it were a ritual that he went through every day. 

Her throat was rough and dry from its enforced silence but the courier had never stayed silent when she had something to say. 

“Gimme a Nuka Cola. Cold,”

It was probably lucky that he hadn’t already poured that whiskey, she thought to herself -- good crystal was hard to come by in the Wastes. 

“… _Pussycat_?”

“Not my name,” was all she could get out. 

Screw the cola she needed to hydrate. 

“Water,”

Benny was watching her from the door way, his arms spread out like wings, hands gripping the doorframe. 

“Water… Gotcha,”

With that, his silhouette was gone from the door and the courier took the opportunity to close her eyes for a moment. 

It seemed to be seconds later when she heard a gentle clink near her head and opened her eyes to the sight of what looked like a glass full of mana. One hundred percent distilled water, as clear as tears. The courier tried to sit up but her arms felt as brittle as Raul’s kneecaps. Benny seemed to think she needed help but a warning growl from her pushed him back a step. 

It took her a painful two minutes but eventually she was mostly upright. Picking up the glass of water she took the first proper drink she’d had in weeks. Moaning in pleasure, she continued to sip slowly as she focused her attention on the hovering Chairman. 

That’s if he still was a Chairman. What had happened up there? Everything was blurred in her mind. She remembered Benny’s double cross – not entirely unexpected – and something about the Securitrons but nothing was quite fitting into place yet and her chest felt as though a Deathclaw was trying to gouge out her heart. 

Carefully putting the drink back on the bedside table the courier tried to make herself as comfortable as she could. 

“So, you fink how did I get here? All I can remember is you pulling a fast one and something about… soldiers?”

Benny pulled his lighter out of his trouser pocket and started rolling it between his fingers. 

“You got shot, pussycat,”

The courier tried not to snort derisively – it would only hurt. 

“Figured that much out myself, thanks Poirot,”

Benny shot her a confused look and the courier sighed in frustration. 

“The point is, _how_ did I get shot? Don’t take this the wrong way, Ben-Man but you were the only one in there that had motive,”

Benny still wouldn't look her in the eye, continuing to pass the lighter from one hand to the other. 

"What about your pal the King?"

" _The_ King?" replied the courier, trying to make sense of the facts through the lingering fog in her head. 

"No, pussycat I'm talking about that sour-faced fella that keeps giving me the death-glare every time I see him,"

"Oh, Pacer," she replied, resting her head back on the pillows. _Her_ pillows, now she came to think about it. 

"Is this... am I in my own room?"

"Yeah, kitten I… we brought ya down after Pacer scrammed. You were in no fit state to be moved any more than that,"

 _Pacer had left her bleeding on the floor_?

"Yeah, well... That brings me back round to the _why_ , Benny,"

A split second of eye contact before he was again looking at the lighter in his hands. 

"You know me, baby I'm all about saving my own skin so when you went for Maria..."

It wasn't surprising but the courier could still feel her fists clenching where they rested on the bedspread. Benny must have noticed too. Swallowing heavily, he crossed and uncrossed his legs, trying to get comfortable. 

"Start from the beginning, Benny. Tell me what happened after you brought out those amped-up Securitrons,"

Benny sighed and leaned forward in his chair before doing something that the courier could barely believe. One hand clasping his lighter, he ran the other repeatedly through his perfectly coiffed hair, leaving it tousled and half-drooping over his brow. 

He started to speak in such a serious, unaffected voice that the courier scarcely recognised him as the slick operator that she had come to know. 

"I started to explain to you and that greasy thug you've started to hang around with how I'd managed to upgrade the Securitrons. I got onto the topic of that damn platinum chip and you brought up the fact that I'd shot you for it," He looked at her ruefully, "All in all it was one of our more ordinary conversations, puss-"

"Get on with it," the courier whispered, her eyes tightly shut. 

Benny's eyes flickered and the half smile that had been forming quickly dissolved. 

"Well. You came up close to me and things got a little... sharp. Before I knew it, you were going for my gun and I... did what I do best,"

The courier opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. 

"You shot me. Yeah, you're pretty damn good at that part; it's keeping me cold and in the ground that you seem to struggle with," 

Benny covered his eyes with one hand. 

"You went down pretty quick and that boy of yours started brandishing the Securitron controller. I managed to get it off him and he ran. After that I managed to get you downstairs and I sent one of the ‘trons to get a doctor from the fort. By the time he got here I thought you were..."

He pulled his hand away from his face, his gaze lingering on the courier's bandaged chest. 

"You looked dead," he continued, "Anyway, the doc managed to pull you back from the brink. After you were stable, he went digging around for the bullet," 

Flashes of remembered pain and a fiery haze of coughed up blood and the courier was grabbing her chest, feeling for the bullet. 

"He says that you uh, suffered some damage to one of your lungs so once you get better, you gotta take it easy – no more roaming around the Wastes, kitten,"

"Are you saying," she began – eyes fixed on the crumbling ceiling, voice as calm as pool of radioactive water, "that you have permanently handicapped me?... _Again_?"

"Aw, pussycat–

" _Don't_ ," she said sharply, cutting him off, "Every time you show up, you screw up my life a little bit more until I'm laid up in a bed with a short-circuiting brain and half a lung missing that ain't coming back. Now, I don't know why you're still hanging around here, you've got everything you wanted. So here's the deal. I want you gone in the next twenty seconds or so help me god I will get out of this bed and I will _end_ you, even if it ends me. Got it?"

Benny staggered out of his chair and raked a hand through his hair once more. 

"You can't possibly mean that, pussycat. I know we don't exactly rub together smoothly but that's why we've got sparks! I know–

"Fifteen seconds,"

Benny strode over to the bed and leant towards the courier, hands braced on the mattress. 

"I know I've done you wrong but you gotta believe me, kitten I never meant to shoot you. If you hadn't gone for my gun... I only wanted to _talk_ , well maybe to gloat a little,"

"Ten seconds. And that's your problem, Benny you've always gotta lord it over everyone else, always gotta use that snake-like tongue of yours like it can turn lead into gold. Well, I'm a reasonable woman and I don't bear grudges but _you_ , you have used up every last inch of my patience and goodwill. Five. Seconds,"

Benny's eyes darkened and his hands fisted in the bedspread. 

"And what are ya gonna do if I leave, huh? You're barely conscious, how're you gonna survive?"

"The doctor seems to have managed just fine till now,"

"Sure but _I_..."

Benny cut himself off mid-sentence, a puzzled, almost innocent look on his face. The courier was about to finish him off, when the fever-tinged memories of darkly shined shoes, gentle hands and a quiet, Vegas voice curled through her mind. 

"Just go, Benny. Please," she whispered tiredly. 

Frozen for a moment, Benny let his mask slide back into place and nodded curtly before striding out of the room. The courier dropped her head back on the pillow and felt herself being pulled back into unconsciousness. She may have been weak as a day-old molerat but she was still thinking clearly – Benny owned New Vegas now and that meant he owned the Lucky 38 as well. He might leave her alone but she very much doubted that he'd go very far. Half-awake she caught a snippet of murmured conversation in the hallway and then the ding of the elevator and the courier knew she was right. Letting herself fall back into oblivion the words whispered to her in her head over and over again. 

"Just get her better, Doc. I'll keep her safe. I swear I'll keep her safe."


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's an update out of the blue! I've mapped out the rest of this story so it shouldn't be too long before it's finished. I doubt anyone's still reading but I do so hate leaving things unfinished :)

"Two months I've been stuck in here, Yes. Two freaking months,"

Yes Man continued to smile down at her from the monitor in the Penthouse. 

"I know! Isn't it a damn shame! However, your period of rehabilitation is almost over and you're ready to hit the streets again! Not that you'd want to hit a street, they pack a pretty heavy punch!"

The courier rolled her eyes at the bot's bizarre sense of humour and returned her attention to the stretching exercises she had been doing. 

The skin across her chest still felt tight and she couldn't do anything more than walk from place to place but compared to a month ago, she was in damn near perfect condition. Two months of enforced rest with Yes Man and only the occasional human company in the form of her doctor would have sent most people mad but the overly-helpful computer program had been far more open to suggestion than Benny had intended. After he had installed Yes Man on the 38's mainframe, Benny had brought in Emily Ortal to fix the little issue the bot had with giving out information to anyone who talked to it. Luckily for the courier, Emily owed her one for helping her bug House's network and after her patch the scientist had left the Courier as one of the two people that Yes Man would respond to. 

"I gotta tell you something!" chirped Yes Man from his lofty perch, "That handsome devil Benny has just entered the building and is making his way up here!"

The courier straightened and rolled her shoulders gently. 

"Thanks, Yes. Hold the elevator will you? He can call it after I'm gone,"

"Yes ma'am!"

Grabbing her jacket and her bottle of water, the courier slowly walked up the stairs and into the elevator. Pressing the button for the Presidential Suite, she could imagine Benny all the way below at the bottom of the tower, angrily mashing the 'up' button and swearing when nothing happened. The courier grinned in the dim lighting of the elevator -- any discomfort of Benny's was a comfort to her. 

The sharply joyful feeling didn't last very long as she stepped into the dull rouge of her suite's hallway. She hadn't seen Benny since the day she'd first woken up but she'd felt his presence all the same. From the food that magically appeared in her fridge, to the medicine and gear that the doctor showed up with -- medicine and gear that there was no way in hell the Mormon Fort possessed -- Benny's guiding hand could be seen everywhere. The few times he had actually stepped foot in the 38, Yes Man had given her enough of a warning to get herself back to her suite and out of the way. It was the one place where Benny never set foot. Not once since the day she'd sent him away. 

As the elevator doors closed behind her, the courier let herself slide to the floor. It was the same ritual she always undertook when Benny came to the ivory tower. Resting her head on the doors, ear to the metal she listened to the whispery silence of the empty shaft. A few seconds later and the quietly-building sound of the approaching lift reached her ears until the doors began to vibrate against her and the noise built until the courier was certain that he was there, just on the other side of that flimsy piece of metal, just for a moment. 

Then the moment passed and the rumbling echo of the elevator faded until there was only that same whispery silence of an empty chasm. 

The courier rubbed at the tender scar on her chest, trying to will the dull ache away. Forcing herself to get up, she wandered aimlessly around the suite, taking a swig of Nuka Cola, chewing half-heartedly on a radroach haunch, listening to the inane ramblings of Mr New Vegas until there was a moment of static and Yes Man's voice came over the intercom. 

"Well hello again, ma'am I'm happy to tell you that that incredibly snazzy guy Benny has just left the Lucky 38!"

"Thanks, Yes. I'm gonna head out tomorrow, see if the lay of the land is the way you've painted it or not. Until then, I don't wanna be disturbed, okay?"

"That's an a-okay on the do not disturb sign, gotcha!" the ever-happy computer replied. 

"Good," said the courier as she stripped off her leather and found her old-world nighty. "Oh, and Yes Man? Benny knows nothing about my leaving tomorrow, does he?"

"No he does not!" replied Yes Man, "Luckily he didn't ask or I would have had to tell him all about it! Isn't that terrible!"

The courier grinned dryly as she pulled the purple satin over her head. 

"Yes it would have been. Absolutely _terrible_."

 

The smell of the Strip and Freeside hadn't changed much in the few months she'd been gone and the courier tried to breathe through her mouth as much as she possibly could. Getting free of Vegas had been relatively easy but scouting the land beyond it was a little more difficult to do without raising suspicion. Yes Man had been right at least when he'd told her that security was a lot tighter in the outer ring of New Vegas these days. Mark II Securitrons were dotted throughout the decaying streets of Freeside and there were guards stationed at the entrances of all the major establishments -- the Kings' building being the only notable exception. 

The courier stared at the door beneath the sun-dimmed neon sign and tried not to imagine all the reasons that might have made Pacer leave her behind. Maybe he was looking out for his men? Maybe his hatred for Benny had overridden his... interest in her? 

Or maybe he was just a jet-headed coward. 

The courier sighed dramatically and slammed her fist against her chest. The pain was heavy and sent fingers of fire across her ribs but it did its job and cleared her head. 

It didn't matter why Pacer had done it, he had and damn the world to hell all over again if she was going to seek him out first. 

Pushing off from the wall, she made her way back into the street and towards the eastern gate. Never walk the Wastes again? Who the hell did Benny think he was dealing with?

 

It took less than a day before the courier had to admit that she was in no fit state to even lift her rifle, let alone defend herself. The raiders that had ambushed her from the side of the road had come so close to finishing her that it had been only luck and someone else's prescience that had saved her from a very ugly end. A jammed gun for one of the raiders had given her enough time to dive into a ditch and un-holster her pistol. Even that wouldn't have been enough to save her though – her reactions had been so sluggish that the courier could still feel the stiffness in her fingers. No, what had really saved her had been the dirty scavenger that had come up behind her and sprayed the raiders with enough lead that they high-tailed it back to whatever cesspit they'd come from. The courier had tried to thank him but the scavenger, ever cautious had trained his gun on her as he edged his way over to the bodies. When the courier spread her arms in surrender and carefully backed away, the scavenger's greed overtook his caution and he turned his attention to the corpses, rifling through their armour for food and valuables. 

The courier took her chance and headed back down the broken road in the direction she'd come from. Three raiders should never have gotten the drop on her and she certainly shouldn't need to be saved by some wild scavenger. She should be able to lift her own gun at least. No, nothing was as it should be but the courier was, if anything a realist and the evidence was telling her plain and simple: Go back to Vegas, or die out here in the Wastes. 

It took her two days before she finally saw the bright towers of Vegas again. Her chest had begun to feel tighter and tighter as she walked, until her whole torso felt as though it were shrinking in slow, constricting lines of fire. Stumbling towards the jagged ruins of old Vegas, the courier kept her eyes peeled for the familiar shape of the Freeside east gate as the tightness in her chest spilled into her head and caught alight. 

Groaning, the courier managed to make it to the corrugated metal gate and push her way inside. The semi-paved road swam before her eyes as she made her way past Mick and Ralph's. The King's School came into view ahead and the courier's mind flashed white-hot as her knees buckled beneath her. The state she was in, the last place she needed to be near was the King's home ground. Staggering to her right, she took the wide, sprawling road towards the rear of the Old Mormon Fort, desperately hoping that she could hold herself together long enough to reach it. 

The cracked, stone walls of the Fort came into view and the courier dragged herself towards its solid, supportive form. The stone was warm and gritty beneath her fingers and she used the harsh, scraping pain against her skin to keep her anchored, to keep her head clear enough to reach the heavy wooden doors of the Followers' refuge. 

The fire was all around her now, consuming every fibre of her mind and body. With the last of her strength, she managed to land one... two knocks on the solid gate, before falling into unconsciousness. 

 

"I've managed to stabilise her but without more accurate information on what's going on in her brain I can't do much more."

Someone answered the voice but it was muffled and far away. The courier felt as though she were under a thick blanket of cotton wool – soft but stifling. Her head was still on fire but for now it was a thick, syrupy heat – heavy, like banked coals. 

Slowly opening her eyes the courier tried to focus on the blurry image to her left, which gradually resolved into the form of Julie Farkas. 

"Doctor?..."

The courier's voice was harsh and uneven but Doctor Farkas still startled and turned towards her. 

"You're awake?"

The courier rolled her eyes or at least she tried to. 

"No need to sound so surprised, Julie,"

"Honey, I'm amazed you're _alive_ , let alone awake and speaking,"

The courier coughed and tried to sit up. 

"That bad, huh? Thought as much the last few months. Ugh, my head is _killing_ me,"

"Well it would," Julie retorted, "You have some serious head trauma going on from what looks like a bullet wound,"

"Yup," the courier grunted as she swung her legs out of bed, "That's what it oughtta look like. Still, I never got round to checking in with a doctor, not since I left Goodsprings so it'd be nice to get your professional opinion,"

"Well, I'd stay sitting if I were you,"

The courier tried to smile but it looked more like a grimace. 

"That bad, huh?"

Julie folded her arms and her face morphed into that professional-medical-expression that all doctors have worn throughout the ages when giving a patient bad news. 

"I'd need an Auto-Doc or something similar to get a precise diagnosis but from the limited tech we have here I can tell you that parts of your brain have been damaged and the neurons in those parts are firing far too often and far too fast... and it seems to be getting worse,"

The courier closed her eyes, a bitter half-smile on her lips. 

"Now those misfiring areas are doing so more irregularly, more intensely. Eventually they won't stop firing and it will be too much for your brain and body to handle. You'll..."

"No need to say it, Doc I get the picture," she said, gingerly rising to her feet, "Any kind of timeframe you can give me?"

"No, no exact date," she replied, "But I wouldn't plan your next birthday party... Or... anything really, after the next few months. I'm sorry..."

"No need to be," the courier replied, "I think I already knew. This just... proves it, I suppose,"

“Is there anyone you want me to let know you’re here? Someone who can help?”

For the smallest of moments, the courier thought of Pacer and the feel of his heart beating beneath her hand. 

“Yeah, could you get in touch with Ben from the Wrangler?”

“Sure,” Julie replied, already waving a Follower over to issue orders. She looked back at the courier who sat hunched over, staring at the ground. 

"What will you do now?"

The courier’s eyes shifted from the dirt floor and she looked the doctor dead in the eye. 

“Try to leave this rotting world a better place than I found it.”


	13. Chapter 13

“Ben?”

“Uhuh?”

“What’s that noise?”

The black of Ben’s room carried their voices like disembodied ghosts across the space. The courier heard the shift of cloth as Ben made his way across the room and settled on the edge of her bed. 

“There’s some kind of fire fight going on out there,” he whispered. “It’s been happening for a while now, sporadically. Not sure what’s going on, exactly – might have something to do with the rumours I’ve been hearing from the gate-dwellers,”

The courier sat up, wiped the sleep from her eyes and wrapped her arms around her knees. 

“Gate-dwellers?”

“Yeah, those people I used to hang around with outside the gate to the Strip. From what I’ve been hearing, traffic in and out of the Strip has been pretty much shut down the last week. That Benny – used to be the leader of the Chairmen?”

The courier’s hands tightened imperceptibly around her elbows at the mention of Benny’s name. 

“Well,” Ben continued, “he’s been laying down the law along the Strip and now he’s moving out into Freeside – taking out anyone who’s stupid enough to stand in his way,”

So Benny was reneging on their deal. Not that surprising really, considering he’d already betrayed them all at the top of the ’38. 

“So that’s the end of it, then?” she whispered – more to herself than to Ben. 

“Nah, honey I don’t think it is,” replied Ben, oblivious to her introspection, “I think it might be the beginning. From what I’ve heard, the changes he’s been making to the Strip have been for the better. He’s run the Omertas and that creepy bastard from the White Glove Society outta Vegas completely, made sure that the NCR are staying well out of Strip politics and as far as I can tell, he’s easing up on the restricted movement in and out of the main drag – at least, that’s how it was until a week or so ago, when he shut down traffic in and out. Now he’s pushing out into Freeside. I guess he’s going to straighten us out the way he did the Three Families,”

“The Kings won’t stand for that, Ben one King in particular,” the courier replied, “he pushes out, they’re going to push back, hard. People are going to _die_ ,”

Ben turned towards her in the gloom and patted her leg gently, his face unreadable in the dark. 

“Just like yesterday, honey. Just like tomorrow too…”

 

“Any news?”

Ben smiled tightly at her and carefully closed the bedroom door behind him. 

“A little. I talked to Julie at the Fort for a minute or two before we were told to get home and stay there, or hunker down at the Fort for the duration. According to her, the King’s recovered enough to be conscious but he’s still stuck on bed rest – will be for the foreseeable future,”

The courier nodded, half relieved and half resigned. 

“Which means that Pacer is running the Kings,”

“Pretty much, honey. Everyone in Freeside and Westside has bowed to the wisdom of following Benny, everyone except the Kings and they have enough firepower to draw this out for days, maybe weeks. And they’ll be bloody days and weeks too but in the end they’ll fall, even if they make Benny cut them all down to the last man,”

The courier exhaled sharply, swiping the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. 

Ben gaze sharpened, focusing on the courier’s face with hawklike intensity. 

“Again?”

The courier nodded wordlessly, long months past the guilt of using her friend’s body. 

Ben walked over to the window that still let in the greasy yellow light of a New Vegas afternoon. 

“I know you won’t talk to me about it but I’m not stupid, girlie I can add your silence and Julie Farkas’ questions together and get four – you’re not getting better, hell you’re not even staying the same. Now, don’t get me wrong, sweetie I’ve always been happy to help you out but I’m an old man and there’s only so much I can do, only so long I can… keep up,”

He went to put a reassuring arm on the courier’s shoulder but she swerved away and shot him a tight-lipped smile instead. 

“So I need to know if there’s anyone else you’d let help you, anyone who you trust enough to help pick up the slack?”

“I know you can’t keep this up, Ben and I know I’ve asked too much of you already, but I’ve had precious few friends in my life and the ones I did have are long gone – to the road, or the bullet, or the wrong side of my temper,”

She looked down at her hands, cupped together in front of her. 

“Well perhaps it’s time to check your temper and see if you can rebuild some bridges?”

The courier turned to face Ben. 

“There’s only one person who got close to being someone that I’d trust when I’m so… vulnerable, and he let me down when I needed him the most,” she sighed and crossed her arms in front of her chest, “Now he’s trying to get himself killed in a war he can’t possibly win. I’m sorry, Ben there’s no one else. All the same, I know that you’ve gone as far as you can go. I’m not asking you to go any further. This day was always going to come – now I just have to ride it out on my own, like I used to… For as long as I can. Goodnight, Ben,” she said – a clear dismissal. 

“…Goodnight, sweetie,” he replied. 

 

“Why are you here?”

Ben supposed that he should have been surprised at his sharp and decidedly unfriendly demeanour, but the courier’s stories had painted a pretty accurate portrait of the man. He wondered what the best approach to take would be in this situation, but the sheer absurdity of his life right now and the courier’s predicament pretty much wiped the board clean of all the plans he could think of. 

“Unsurprisingly, my time is quite precious right now, so if you don’t got anything to say... well, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out,”

Trying not to grimace in frustrated amusement, Ben gestured for a half-upright Pacer to sit back down in his chair. Scowling, Pacer did so, letting the air whoosh out of his lungs as he dropped bonelessly into his seat. 

“Well, there’s no easy way to say this, Mister, but we share an acquaintance and this acquaintance needs help – more help than I can give,”

Pacer’s eyebrow shot up, but his expression remained petulant. 

Ben fidgeted in his seat, not wanting to give away more until he knew whether this little brat was going to help or make things worse. 

“This acquaintance?” Pacer asked, his eyes roaming around the room, “Why do they need my help particularly?”

Ben chose his words carefully. 

“Because you were there for them when they were vulnerable… and they’re vulnerable again now, boy – more vulnerable than ever,” Ben tried to hide the flash of a smile, “They’re also about a stubborn as you and twice as dangerous, but don’t let that stop ya,”

Pacer’s eyes flashed and he very carefully placed his hands on the desk in front of him. 

“I am a very dangerous man, you old whore. I suggest you don’t forget it,”

Ben laughed derisively as he stood. 

“You don’t scare me, boy. I’ve seen more shit than a legion latrine. Now, if you decide you want to help her, we’ll be waiting in the Atomic Wrangler – that’s her world now – it’s the only world she’ll know until the end of her days. Come look us up if you care enough about her to make that world a little easier to bear,”

“…Her?”

Pacer’s eyes were a mix of fear and hope. 

Ben turned back to look at the impetuous King, one hand braced on the doorway. 

“Yes. _Her_ ,”

Ben said the word as though it described only one person in the whole world. 

And to Pacer, in some ways, it did.


	14. Chapter 14

She was pacing her room like a caged Yao Guai, the sweat dripping off her and her hands trembling at her sides. She had long ago closed the ragged curtains to block out as much of the merciless Mojave sun as was possible, but every stray strip of light seared across her optic nerve like acid across tender skin. 

When the sound of the door opening reached her ears she jerked away as though someone had shot her. 

“Stay away, Ben” she shouted hoarsely, gravel in her throat, “You can’t help anymore, just… just keep away until it’s over,”

The door continued to open to reveal two shadowy figures in the dank dimness of the corridor. As Ben stepped forward, the courier jerked away again, but as Pacer followed, his hands fisted tightly at his sides, she nearly fell to her knees. 

A wash of longing and intense arousal and something close to fear… or hatred closed over her and she let out an involuntary gasp. 

“No!” the courier began to rock back and forth as though she was riding out contractions, “Ben, get him out of here, get him out, _get him out_!”

Ben swept forward and came to his knees in front of her. 

“No sweetie, you need him, he’s here to help. You gotta let him in or this thing is gonna burn you up until you’re nothin’ but ashes and dust,”

A smile that was closer to a snarl and she was grabbing Ben by the collar. 

“Don’t you get it yet? I’m already on fire, old man, it’s just a matter of time… just a matter of time until… a matter of time, matter of time, matter of time –“

Ben turned back towards Pacer and shot him a look of pure desperation. 

“Help her, she _needs_ you,”

Pacer was as close to the far wall as he could possibly get without becoming wallpaper but his eyes were locked on the courier. 

“She died. He let her die. I saw him do it, I saw the _blood_!”

“Pacer…” the courier moaned, almost lost to words. 

Pacer crept forward, crouched down low, eyes never leaving her face. 

“You died. I saw, I _saw_. Not even you could survive that much damage. Not even you,”

Pacer ran a hesitant finger along the line of her jaw until he reached her chin and turned her flushed face towards him. 

“You’re still here,” he whispered, “How are you still here with me?”

Eyes still closed, face tilted up towards him, the courier managed a smile. 

“Where else would I be but hell?” she replied. 

Pacer let out a sob and dragged her into his arms, burying his face into the crook of her neck. 

Ben looked away, uncomfortable and quietly locked himself out of the room. 

 

All Pacer wanted to do was hold her, but the courier’s fever was spiking and her need for release was building to unbearable levels. Speech was now beyond her, but she didn’t need it anymore, all she needed was Pacer’s body, Pacer’s green eyes boring into hers. 

Pulling him away from her body, she scrabbled at his jacket, trying to rip it away from him as quickly as possible, but her own need was getting in her way. Grabbing her hands as gently as he could, Pacer stilled her desperate movements and quickly shucked his jacket, followed by his striped top. 

The courier stared hungrily at his chest, before reaching forward and inhaling the scent of him, rubbing her heated skin against the blessed coolness of his own, hands snaking around the narrowness of his waist to rest in the small of his back. As she pulled herself into his lap, Pacer took the opportunity to pull her own tank top over her head, followed by her bra. Before the clothes had even settled on the ground he had buried his lips in her hair, his hands feverishly wandering the expanse of her back. 

“Don’t ever leave me again, don’t ever leave me,” he kept whispering into her hair, happy to just inhale the scent of her, but the courier needed more, her mind almost gone, consumed by the fire in her veins. 

Pushing him down onto the floor, the courier scrabbled at his pants until she found purchase and dragged them off him with little finesse. Pacer tried to lean forward and help her with her own wasteland trousers but she pushed him harshly to the floor before ripping her pants down and away herself. 

Skin to skin, the courier tried to get every inch of her body pressed up against Pacer’s, her hands fisted in his tousled hair, her lips locked with his own. Moaning in pleasure, the courier reached one hand down to grasp his cock, every ragged breath she took was in rhythm with the movement of her hand, her hips rolling with them, pressing him hard between them. 

With a groan, Pacer wrapped his arms around her back and rolled her over until he lay above her, her hands still feverishly pumping him, her lips tracing trails across the expanse of his chest. 

“I can’t wait, I can’t wait. Forgive me,” Pacer whispered into the hollow of her throat before he took his hand and guided himself inside her in one, swift thrust. 

The courier grunted gutturally and flung her head back, her body arched in pleasure. Pacer kept whispering more and more incoherent nothings as he propped himself up on elbows and began to move inside her. The courier wrapped her legs around him and lifted her head up to meet him, their lips clashing in a desperate, aching need for each other. 

Pacer’s eyes were half covered by the fall of his hair but the courier could still see their intense green depths through the honey-brown strands. As his pace became harder, faster and then more and more uneven, it was all the courier could do to focus on his eyes as the sweat mingled on their skin and her hands ran up his back and into the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“Oh god I’ve missed you, the sound of you, the _smell_ of you. Just… let me…”

With that, Pacer’s hips stuttered as he arched his back and came with a guttural cry. The courier rose to meet him, the feel of him pulsing inside her, tumbling her over the heat-fuelled edge and into the lava-like ecstasy beyond. 

Pacer let himself fall on top of the courier, languidly enjoying the press of her breasts against his body and the feel of her, hot and warm surrounding him. Rolling onto his side, he pulled her to him, stroking a hand across her hair, over and over again. He would have been happy to stay that way but the courier’s blood no longer settled so easily, as she circled closer and closer to her final, grand immolation. Over and over again, throughout the night they held fast to each other, limbs and lips and hands tangled together until neither had the will or the desire to know where one of them began and the other ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay.. thought I should probably put some kind of explanation down here to... well, explain heh.   
> I have an outline for the rest of this story and a little bit more written. Alas real-life writing has gotten in the way in the last year and when I write it needs to be my doctorate, not really fun Fallout fanfic :(  
> However, I've never left a work unfinished and I have no intention of letting this one remain so. It'll just take a little while before I can return to it.   
> Thanks for reading this far though! And I'm sorry, I know how much WiPs suuuuuck :P


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